Blaise Zerega: Hello, everyone and welcome to Alta Journal's, California Book Club. It's a thrill to be here tonight for Javier Zamora, host John Freeman, and special guest Ingrid Rojas Contreras. My name is Blaise Zerega. I'm Alta's editorial director and we've got a full house tonight, so I encourage everyone to say hello in the chat and maybe say where they're Zooming in from. I'm coming tonight at you from foggy San Francisco. While you're doing that, I've got a little bit of housekeeping please.
Tonight's event is part of the California Book Club, Alta's free monthly gathering featuring books that form what we like to think of as a definitive guide to understanding life in the Golden State. In the weeks leading up to each club meeting, altaonline.com publishes numerous articles, essays, an excerpt, interviews about that month's pick. And if you haven't had a chance to read them yet, I'd encourage you to please go and do so.
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Without further ado, please let me turn this over to the host of tonight's California Book Club gathering, John Freeman.
John Freeman: Thank you, Blaise. It's nice to see everybody here. 25 years ago this spring when he was nine years old, Javier Zamora left his house in El Salvador with his grandfather at dawn and began a journey to the United States. It would take several thousand miles and what he thought would take a mere few weeks, ended up taking two months. He left. He has written about this journey and his work and his work of poetry, his debut volume, Unaccompanied, which was published in 2017 and was a massive breakthrough in the way that you could write about not just crossing over the border, but all the reasons why someone has to cross a border, go from one place to another. His extraordinary debut work of poetry.
But we're here because Javier took another crack at that story, an extraordinary memoir, Solito, which retells this story from his nine-year-old perspective. It is an astonishing act of retrieval. It is an adventurous story. It is a story about love, about found family, about fun that can happen in terrible circumstances. It's a story that retrieves his own childhood. It won the Los Angeles Times book prize and it's my great joy to be joined by him here with me, Javier Zamora.
Javier Zamora: Hi, everybody. Hi, John. It's a pleasure to speak with you across the pond.
Freeman: Oh, it's great to see you. So where are you right now?
Zamora: I'm at home in Tucson? It's 111 and waiting, hoping for it to rain.
Freeman: I am really blown away by this book on the second read because I went back and reread your poems, which were published in 2017. Solito, which describes the journey I briefly described, came out in 2022, so there's five years between those books. Can you tell me a little bit about what happened in those five years and what prepared you to write this sort epic, but also very intimate account of this journey?
Zamora: I think two major things happened and I think Solito wouldn't exist without them. And the first is that I got a green card finally. I don't think that I could have been as honest or gone as deep into my trauma if I didn't have the privilege of not having to look over my back or for fearing if I write something that I would get deported or put my immigration at risk or my family at risk. That's the first.
The other thing is that I finally found a therapist that worked for me and I speak a lot about therapy and I feel like my book tour or having this book out has turned into an advertisement for therapy, but it genuinely changed my life for the better. But I think a lot of people have misunderstood when I just mentioned capital T, therapy, but I want to reiterate that it took 13 different tries at therapy over a 20-year expand for it to finally work or for me or for something that that therapist said to finally click something inside of me that helped me go inwards.
I've spoken about the second or first meeting that I had with Caro, that's my therapist's name. And in one of those two meetings she suggested after I told her that I was a writer, she suggested what would it be or what would it feel like for me to go back into my nine-year-old body and write from that perspective? And it was her idea that I write this book from that perspective. I was trying to write it from my 29-year perspective. I was living in Boston at the time.
I had a fancy fellowship at Harvard and I think that in hindsight, me trying to write from my adult perspective, I think I was imagining an audience or a reader that wasn't necessarily me. We have to remember that that guy was the president during those years when I started to write this book and essentially post therapy, and having a green card reminded me that I'm not writing to convince citizens. I'm writing to help save and to teach that 9-year-old that he also deserves love.
Freeman: It begins in nine-year-old Javier's ear. The word, trip begins and it sort of starts. We're in your body on the first page and this kind of thing is about to happen and it's both exciting and slightly scary because your father has crossed over, your mother has crossed over, and you set the world that you lived in El Salvador and you begin leave taking immediately. And you have this secret from your friends. Right away the thing that to me put us in your body is the sound of the language. You move between English and Spanish really well and you don't ever explain one to the other often. I'm wondering, that seemed must've been some kind of breakthrough to be able to access a nine-year-old you who's being narrated by a 29-year-old you but is also still nine-year-old you.
Zamora: I think when any immigrant goes to a new country, I think language is the first barrier almost like another frontier. And not only the new language, but then if you have the privilege to go to a country where your own language is also the second most spoken language, there's another level of assimilation that occurs. By that, I mean that as a Central American as a Salvadoran moving to California in 1999, the predominant Spanish was Mexican Spanish.
If you go to parts of Queens, the predominant Spanish gathered going to be Puerto Rican or Dominican Spanish or Colombian, maybe Ecuadorian if you're lucky. But in San Francisco it was just Mexican. And from the ages of nine until I started writing poetry, when I turned 17, I yearned to find our Jose or Caliche or slang. And at that time there was no poetry book written by a Salvador.
And I think it took me reading Leticia Hernandez who lives in San Francisco reading her first book in order to find myself and see myself. And from that point on, poetry became the door through which I could do away with years of assimilation. We can talk about assimilation being a protective cloak so people wouldn't ask if I had documents or not, so people wouldn't ask me how I had gotten to this country. Poetry writing reminded me of the tongue that I only felt comfortable speaking at home.
So from the moment that I picked up a pen consciously and began to consciously write poetry when I was 17, 18, I knew that I wanted to honor my language, the language of the poor, which is important as well because now that I have the privilege to go back to El Salvador, if you are middle to upper class, you don't talk like how I speak Spanish. And this happens all over Latin American, all over the world too. There's a level of looking down upon those that don't come from well.
So when I write Caliche, when I write our slang, it's also a subversive act and it's an act that you wrote that piece on Alta, which really moved me about what Roque Dalton also taught me. Roque Dalton at the time won the biggest Latin American prize, Casa de las Americas in 1969. He was the first Salvador to win this huge international prize and he did it by sounding like the people. He did it by sounding like my parents, which is why my parents know who he is. Once I told them that I wanted to write poetry, they told me about Roque and then I read it and it was my family in the pages.
Freeman: I hear his voice in the first poem of this book, in the last lines of that first poem, "Abuelita, please forgive me, but tell them they don't know shit." I feel like you think of poets and very few poets could swear quite the way that he did and make it sound both part of the poem and also the way that people spoke. I want to get into your family a little bit because you were going from El Salvador to Arizona to meet them, but you were traveling with your grandfather.
I had met your grandfather in this book of poems and I met a very different person, sort of more remote, a little bit more weighted with what he had probably seen during the Civil War, angry or angrier. And in this book I got some of those things. You talk about the fact that he drank and then stopped, but then he comes on the trip with you and you get this whole other person that's kind of tender and gentle. I wonder if you can talk about going back to your nine-year-old self and what it also helped you retrieve of your family members when you saw what they were going through from your child's eyes again.
Zamora: When you don't have the privilege of being around a person that has caused you harm, which is my grandpa, he quit drinking when I turned five, when my mom left. But before that, he was an alcoholic. Well, some of the first memories are him breaking down a door because my grandma had locked him out because he was too drunk, which is traumatic. Before I started writing this book when I'm 29 or whenever I wrote Unaccompanied before I got a green card, before 27, those were the only memories, poignant memories that I had of my grandpa.
After I got the green card and I had the privilege of returning, I got to re-meet this person and he showed me aspects of himself that were always there, but my brain didn't remember because he hadn't yet processed all of the harm that he caused us and he caused me.
At the same time, this is an old school Latino man full of patriarchy and he showed me kindnesses and kindness that it's still very difficult for him to show women. So he's very complicated, but I think I couldn't have written him and I couldn't have remembered what he did for me in Guatemala because he was with me for a month. And what he did for me then is that he gave me courage and he gave me this powerful metaphor or this powerful, very, whatever you would like to think of it, this very powerful spiritual being that told a nine-year old that he was going to be taking care of.
And I'm talking about the Cadejo, which is like this dog-like figure spirit, ancestry, ancestors. And my grandpa gave me that and I think that was his biggest contribution for the rest of the weeks and the rest of the trip for me and my nine-year-old brain.
Freeman: That's beautiful. Do you think you could read a tiny section from the beginning of the book for anyone who hasn't read it yet or just so we can hear you read from it?
Zamora: Yeah. I'll do the end of chapter one. And for those that haven't read the book, the book begins a few days before the day that I leave my country and I leave my country on April 6th, 1999.
"It's dawn, indigo like when mom left. Mali kisses me awake and I have to get ready. The roosters crow, La Bonita barks, the birds sing, the world is waking up. The stars turn off one by one. To shower, I pull water from a well with a bucket. Grandpa already showered. Abuelita dries me off. Mali irons my clothes. The outfit has been picked out. A nice dress shirt, dark blue. Dark blue jeans. A black belt. Black dress shoes."
"Next to the hard-boiled eggs, aguacate, queso duro, and tortillas, a black backpack. Even the brand name has been crossed out. Inside it, a dark T-shirt, black pants, two pairs of underwear, an extra pair of shoes, a plastic toothbrush, a comb, soccer shorts, Colgate toothpaste, a bottle of Palmolive soap, Head & Shoulders shampoo, and another dark-blue short-sleeved dress shirt. There's a notebook, Bic pens, pencils, and the assignments my teachers gave me. 'Everything has to be dark colors,' Mali explains. 'The coyote's orders.' I eat and grandpa waits by the door holding my black backpack and his own regular one. He looks at his watch."
"Abuelita combs my hair. Mali kneels in front of me to butt my shirt. She tucks it in, kisses my forehead. Lupe is here, the earliest I've seen her come visit. She hugs me, kisses me, wishes me luck. Julia is sleeping in Abuelita's bed between two pillows to keep her from falling. Abuelita kisses me, kneels to hug me. Then Mali and Abuelita hug me at the same time, only now I cry. This is it. The thing I wanted to happen, but it's happening so fast."
"Te queremos mucho, Chepito. Te cuidás. Que Dios te bendiga, here, everywhere, always. We'll be waiting for you. Praying, you'll make it there safely, Javiercito. Their voices almost in unison, soft, breaking with every word. Tears running down the round faces. I can't stop crying. Then they make the cross over my forehead, over my head, over my entire body, wiping my tears with their hands. Grandpa grabs my arm, walks me past the door. 'Don't look back,' he says. But I do. I see Abuelita and Mali in the middle of the door holding each other. Lupe has a hand on each of their shoulders. 'Come on,' grandpa says. And we walk."
Freeman: There's quite a lot of comments in the comment section. I cried when I read that the last part of the first chapter. For those of us who have left our homes and country, we know how hard it is to say goodbye. Sarah, who wrote in from the audience said, "You had to say goodbye to so many people in your life." Do you have any thoughts about how that has affected your sense of security, of kinship, of life, that you have to say goodbye so often?
Zamora: It has directly influenced my trust. It is very difficult for me to trust people. And I didn't understand that until this last therapist who I'm still with and I meet with every Wednesday morning. But it is very easy to see in hindsight how clearly this would affect somebody. But when you're the person that has lived it is humbling to get to a point where you can clearly see it.
Freeman: We're going to be joined in a few minutes by Ingrid Rojas Contreras, the author of Fruit of the Drunken Tree, and The Man Who Could Move Clouds. I imagine you two will talk more about memory. But before she joins us, I want to talk a little bit more about these early days of the journey. And they're all slightly prefigured in that scene where you describe the backpack very closely and the clothes which go into it and the rituals that happen before you leave.
And this book is full of lots of details about the clothes you put on for what settings and the names that you're supposed to adopt and the food that you eat in various stops along the way. I love the way that these details make the trip real. They're the kinds of things that a nine-year-old would notice. But I also feel like they're ways to contain tenderness before tenderness catches up with you again because you leave your grandfather behind and you're supposed to be watched over by this guy, Marcelo, that he's paid and he doesn't really do a terribly great job, but someone steps in, this guy named Chino.
It's not until at some point for reasons that in the book he explains he lost his brother. So he puts you inside his coat and it rubs your arms as you're on a boat. It's very cold. And I think that's the first time he touches you. And you haven't been touched for about a hundred pages. I love the fact that you note those things so closely. I guess I want to ask you a little bit more about touch and tenderness along this journey because when I read the title of the book before I read it along a while ago, I thought, "Oh, this is going to be brutal." But in fact it's like you're drawing us towards this care the whole time. And I don't know if you can say anything about that.
Zamora: Well, not to revert back to what you wrote, and I think this is the part that made me tear up once again is that the point of the book is love. I wouldn't be here without the tenderness and radical love that these strangers showed a nine-year-old. They did not have to do that, which is, I think now I make it a point to talk about Palestine ever since October, and this is why I'm wearing this shirt because I think your everyday individual human being in this world, we need to be reminded of love and of empathy.
I think that we have let the genocide continue for more than six months now because we lack what Chino, what Patricia, what Carla showed me as a nine-year-old kid. And outside of that, when you are left by a parent, your brain and your mind and your upbringing is exponentially affected; when you're left by two parents, that gets even higher.
So for me, touch, hugs, tenderness was always something that I yearned for. Any child yearned for that because that is the guarantee, the natural guarantee that a parent provides protection and love. And for me, when you don't grow up with a parent, I didn't have that. And so as a little kid, I do remember the first time that Chino hugged me on the boat and I have never been able to forget that. I still remember the way that he smells because in my life up to that point, that warmth meant everything.
And watching the way that Patricia really cared for her 12-year-old daughter, Carla, that's what I wanted. So I was seeing what the thing that I wanted most in my life, that time being enacted right in front of me because we roomed together. And on the other end then I get to trust Chino because he took care of me. I think those small acts is what makes us human and we need to be reminded of more acts like that. And I think that is the point. I wouldn't have survived without love.
Freeman: Gosh, I'm glad that you brought up Palestine because I think one of the most arresting parts of being witness to the ongoing genocide there is, is its incredible cost on children. Children who are left without parents, parents who watch their children die, who are separated from them. And rereading this book, I thought, of course, Javier would be active also because Salvadorans who had to leave are one of the highest population percentages who had to leave due to a violent conflict outside of Syria. I think there's something over 700,000 people from El Salvador in California and the numbers of people who had to migrate due to violent conflict are extremely high. And I guess-
Zamora: Due to U.S. funding as well, I have the privilege of being a history major and I think I needed to be a history major because when you're an undocumented immigrant, everybody tells you that whatever you feel is just your feelings and you don't know things. And so I really needed the facts. And the facts are that at the peak of the Salvadorian Civil War, the right wing government that murdered most of our people was getting $3 million a day from taxpayers and only Israel was getting more funding at that time. And it's the same thing now.
Also in your essay, you equate and when I learned in college as well that it's the same company that is building the wall right here in Arizona. It's like an hour away. It's the same company that has built the watched towers and the walls in Palestine. That just convinced me to tear it all down. And this is why I will forever be pro-Palestine and I would keep reminding people to do everything that they can to stop the genocide.
Freeman: I'd like to bring in Ingrid Rojas Contreras now. She came over around the same time, 1998 rather than 1999. She's the author of the novel Fruit of the Drunken Tree, which won the Silver Award from the California Book Awards for first fiction, and a memoir, The Man Who Could Move Clouds, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Critic Circle. It's a great pleasure to have you here, Ingrid. I'm going to retreat and you can take the reins.
Ingrid Rojas Contreras: Thank you, John. Hi, Javier. I'm so happy to be here today. I-
Zamora: It's cool too. I'm such a huge fan, so thank you for being here.
Contreras: Oh my God, I loved your book and I remember the way that we met as I first read your poetry book and reached out to you for an interview, I think. Is that how we met?
Zamora: I think so, yeah.
Contreras: Yeah. It's such a stunning book. One of the things that really struck me, and we were talking with John about this idea of radical love. I think that throughout the book there's so many scenes where you're talking about having this consciousness of feeling like you're family with the people that are crossing with you. At some point you're looking at this long line and you're saying these are my cousins and this is my family. I think that books sometimes lead us into feeling and that moment kind of lead us into that feeling of everybody can be your family and what you were saying about radical love and how a reader might take that moment and might understand it to mean what you were understanding in that moment, but also that can be for the reader moment where we also understand we are kind of kinship and family with everyone.
This is not really a question, but I was just more thinking about the way that borders and border thinking keep us from this realization of kinship and radical love toward the other people, which is, I just really loved that part of the book. And it was just really moving to read that realization.
Zamora: Thank you.
Contreras: So my first question, I was reading this anthology that you're in, which is called Here to Stay, which is coming out soon. I think it's like people can pre-order right now, and you were writing about writing toward not forgetting our roots, and you wrote, "It's with these undying roots that we can nourish the future." I was thinking about how difficult it is to go back and reclaim and write into these memories that are hard to go into, but how the roots and the thing that you're trying to reclaim is also back there. And so there's an importance and an urgency to going back. Do you want to talk a little bit about how you went about reconstructing memory and just going back to these hard to revisit places?
Zamora: When I wrote that paragraph in a book that everybody should get, I think it comes out in a month or two, it's called Here to Stay by the Undocu poets. It was another thing that has helped me heal and I think also tap into this very difficult memories. I like to remind people I tried it all. I became vegan, I was doing yoga. My partner, now wife, is a Reiki practitioner. I did Reiki. I was hiking, running, doing all the things that people tell you to do like, "If you want to change, do all this shit." I did it.
But the thing that has stuck still, and for me it's very important and it's tied to what I was saying previously, is understanding who I am. And by that I mean I am an indigenous man. I am Nahuat Pipil and in our calendar, which is the most precise calendar ever invented by any human civilization.
We have a day that is [foreign language 00:35:27] in Mayan or [foreign language 00:35:33] in Aztec, which is that it is important during that day to grow without forgetting your roots. And if you keep on growing, you must grow with the understanding of where you're from. Now add a layer, stick with me, add a layer of immigration to that. When I couldn't travel back to my country for 19 years to my land where I was born, where I'm indigenous from, I thought that I was missing the country itself, the people. If you read Unaccompanied, I was almost idealizing the place, but I didn't understand yet that I was idealizing my childhood.
And what it actually was missing, what I yearned for and where my roots are, are in my family, in my people, in my grandma, in my grandpa, in my cousin. And then yes, also the land. I was also disheartened and disheartened now with everything that's still going on in my country. We can get into politics or not, but I don't agree with a lot of things that this president is doing and we are distancing ourselves more from who we truly are. And that is a long way of saying that spirituality helped me tap into my memories. The privilege of movement also it helped me remember things and tap things. Therapy helped me. A lot of things.
Contreras: I think as someone who's migrated as well, I almost feel like because you go through this period of time where you have a chance of becoming someone else, and you were talking about a simulation. I feel like there's a dark period to migrating where in order to feel or to get to safety, you will give up anything. I will do my best to appear like I'm one of you in exchange for the safety that I want. And then there comes this other part of the process where you start to realize that you can actually reclaim things and that you can actually, I don't know, stand in your power.
You can begin to come into the consciousness of, I don't know why I thought that this was the way, but it's the fear of not having the safety. That's why we all go through that. I love what you're saying about reclaiming your roots and thinking about your family and thinking about your lineage. And that was something that was really important to my... I think to my work, but also to my life as well. It was so important to reclaim that.
I wonder how you feel like it's because we had a rupture of place and time in some ways we become outsiders to what's going on in our country, which in this other way makes it easier to see these things and write about it in a clear way because you're suddenly outside of it. Did you feel that way?
Zamora: Absolutely. And not to fanboy here, but reading the interviews for your first novel, I think I've learned a lot from your process and reading your memoir as well about... I think we're navigating the same things. Another way to put this, and it's interesting because my wife had therapy yesterday as well, and another way to put it is belonging versus authenticity. I think when we immigrate, we want to belong so bad, but it's not only about immigration. I think it's just about growing up what it means to be a teenager.
Every teenager wants to be belong to a group because nobody wants to feel like an outsider. But then you grow up and you're like, "Oh, I like those things. That's not... Why? Why would I ever agree? That's not who I am. Who am I? What is authentic or read authentic to me?" I think that is perhaps the only privilege of being an immigrant. And I think you must be searching for that authenticity in order to critique empty view things from afar. Because you're right, I am an outsider when I go back to El Salvador. I don't know life. I don't live there anymore. And my mentality has shifted from people that stayed there.
And by that, I mean something very literal that this president is not talking about is femicide, and he is very anti-queer. He might say that because I'm an immigrant and have had these ideas of being the United States, that's why I don't agree with femicide or with queer rights. I do. Or pro-abortion. But to somebody that has stayed in El Salvador, that might be, "Oh, that's a red flag. Why would you?"
So I don't know. We're deviating or maybe I'm not answering the question that you asked, but I think I'm just still searching for what makes me authentic. And I think that that is directly tied to being uprooted and migrating.
Contreras: I mean, yeah, I think that that's why it's so important, especially for us, your community, our community for us to receive your book is so important when the book is written from a place of what is true to me right now. Even if it feels hard to go back and even if it feels hard to go there, say it. Even if it feels like you go through this whole journey in order to write the book. Because then everybody who reads it can know like, "Oh, I also get to be this. I don't have to assimilate." You know what I mean? It becomes such an important work that it just means so much to everyone.
Zamora: And representation. We didn't have that growing up here. We were still... As a country, the United States would still... Everybody needs to assemble it. And in a way, we are still being fed that. Let's make the country great again. It was never great for us or it is never been great for people that look like me and you. So keep questioning.
Contreras:Well, I think that's all for me and I think we want to bring John back and I'll be back at the end, but I just want to say love so much everything that you're saying.
Zamora: Thank you. I'm a huge fan.
Freeman: Thank you, Ingrid. There's lots going on in the chat, Javier. Quite a few people are teachers. One wrote, "I'm a Spanish teacher. I'm going to teach a part of your work next year." There's been some questions about what you learned from specific teachers. One factoid, which maybe isn't in Javier's bio, is that when he was growing up, I think maybe you can correct me on this, Javier, that you went to 826 Valencia.
Zamora: Yep.
Freeman: How old were you and did you actually take classes with Dave Eggers or was it some other teachers there?
Zamora: No, I did. Dave Eggers was the very first writer that I met in person, which is weird. And it was really cool because at that point I thought that every writer was dead. I didn't know that writers were living things. I was 17 and I think 826 helped me talking about representation. It helped me see a path towards becoming a writer. It didn't happen overnight. I think I made a conscious decision to want to be a writer when I turned 21. I don't know why, but 826 planted that idea.
Freeman: And one other connection you have to us poetry is your parents were taking English classes with Carol Adair who is the partner of Kay Ryan who would go on to become the poet laureate of the United States. Did you ever cross paths with Kay Ryan as a child?
Zamora: I met Kay before she became a US poet Laureate. My parents once I made it here... And you can't make this up. It's like there are people watching over me. I can't believe that my parents learned English from Kay Ryan's partner, Carol there because she would teach at College of Marin.
It is in her class, at the end of the book I mentioned that they lit a candle as a class together and Kay Ryan came to my book release in Quarter Madera, a book passage for Unaccompanied. And then she told me and reminded me of that. She was like, "I lit a candle for you." We lost contact. She changed her phone number. So, hey, Ryan, if you're out there, if there's anybody out there that knows, Kay, I love you. Thank you for everything that you've done for my family and my parents.
Freeman: God. As someone just said in the chat, "Your guardian angels are strong." Gerald Sato said, "A moving moment is when you reject the Cadejo who's been your witness and a talisman to that point." Or does a Cadejo actually completely disappear from your life back then and even now?
Zamora: I think the Cadejo came back and the Cadejo is part of my roots that I was so... Because of assimilation, because of immigration, I don't know, I hadn't remember that story. That is a very big part of growing up in El Salvador or maybe the Catholic school that I went to in El Salvador. But I remember learning about this in school and my parents also teaching me this and my grandpa gifting me this knowledge or reminded me of this. But not until I was 29 did I remember the importance of it.
I think 29 for me was a big year and I knew that I needed to include it in the book. So now I light an incense every day. I follow the Mayan calendar. I am trying my hardest to be conscious and to rescue or remember my indigenous roots.
Freeman: That kind of answers the question that Claudia Ramirez Flores had about your spirituality. One that Liza Papadopoulou has, which a lot of other people have, is have you reconnected with Chino and Patricia? And for those who haven't read the book yet, Chino is the man who hugs you on the boat, one of the many legs of the journey north. And Patricia is a woman probably of late 20s?
Zamora: 30, 32.
Freeman: 30? 32. And she has a kid named Carla. And you basically travel with them and often pretend to be their son. And that is what slightly protects you getting through various checkpoints. What happened?
Zamora: So in the book I mentioned that they had my phone number and they called. I want to say they would call once a week for the first eight weeks of my time in the United States. And then they changed their phone number and we never heard from them again. It's been since 1999, August of 1999, I haven't heard from them. So I know that they did make it to the DMV. They were going to Alexandria, I think in Virginia. So I don't know if they're still in the country. I don't know if they're still alive. I've gotten many offers by journalists by, I didn't even know this thing, headhunters to search for them pro bono.
But I haven't taken those offers because I just remember if they would've reached out to me when I wasn't ready to process all of this trauma, it would have really fucked me up. I remembered it, but I didn't want to remember the story for 20 years. So it weighs heavy on me. And I was a kid when I went through this. The book and my memories would feel a lot different had it been 12, had it been a 20-year-old or a 30-year-old mom. This shit is probably dark as fuck. So I'm hoping that when they're ready and if they're still alive and if they find out about the book, that we will be reunited. I'm very hopeful that that will happen.
Freeman: One of the other questions that has popped up is, I'm jumping ahead here a little bit, but this book ends with you arriving in the United States. That is obvious by the fact that you're here and writing in English and the book is here. But what were your feelings upon meeting your parents? Did you feel sad about leaving your newly found family behind? Did you have any feelings on the way there of feeling betrayed by your parents, having left you behind? That certainly comes up in other stories, memoirs, for example, of this sort of feeling of being left behind.
Zamora: For me, it was just a big let down. As a kid and I don't think it only happens to you when you're a kid, but at any immigrant at any age, and this is before social media, so I had no idea what the country was like outside of TV. I genuinely thought that I was coming to a version of the United States that looked or resembled Friends, Baywatch, Full House or Saved By The Bell. And of course, when you have two undocumented parents, that is not the reality. I was suspecting a home. We had a two bedroom apartment in which we rented the living room to a family and we rented another room to two men. So my whole world was crunched.
There wasn't much. There weren't many trees where I lived in San Rafael. I lived in the canal. There were a lot of apartment complexes. The United States didn't live up to its promise for a long time, for decades. It's still not really living up to the promise. And I think we also have to talk about that. So I am writing what I hope turns into another book, but it's about that the huge depression that I think we all have to address and talk about happens to us immigrants, especially your children when you get here and you find out that people work nine to five. Sometimes they work two jobs and you're never going to see... You don't really see your parents.
Freeman: Oh man. There's a memoir by Binyavanga Wainaina called One Day I Will Write About This Place, and it's about growing up in Kenya and it begins around the age that you are in Solito. It does something slightly similar in that as the book goes on, his language ages and he becomes more... He gets closer to, but never fully inhabits an adult perspective. There's a question in the audience from someone named Dave who notices that in the book, after they go through Guatemala and get to Mexico and they finally get two chickens who take them across the border and they fail twice.
The second try is something you wrote about in a poem where a border guard for some reason lets you and the other people you're with loose that lets you go and gives you instructions as when to cross again. And on the third try, the tone of the description changes. It's like suddenly there's a shift in the point of view. I wonder if that was done on purpose and why.
Zamora: I mean, yes, it absolutely done on purpose. And I do also remember just being sort of over it. Here we go again. And not being as hopeful. Although as a kid I still knew and I really believed that I was going to see my parents. I just didn't think that it was going to take three tries. I was, I think in my mind ready for a fourth one. But it was also heartbreaking to begin to see the adults around me who had pretty much held it together.
I remember Patricia being like, "This is the last time. I don't want to do this shit again." And so that would explain the shift. And it's much shorter because there are so many ways that you could, from a literary perspective, describe the desert or describe this anticipation without getting tired of it.
Freeman: Javier, there's a lot of kinship to you in the chat. There's Karine Armen writes, "I'm an Armenian and still carry my ancestors' pain." Anna Diaz writes, "Listening to you both is inspiring me to finally write my book. Thank you."
Zamora: Write it.
Freeman: This was when you were talking to Ingrid. Johnna Katz had a question about your feeling about the recent Biden executive order on DACA and undocumented spouses of American citizens. Do you want to comment about that?
Zamora: It's a very small step and a very long staircase. And it's a little bit too late and it honestly doesn't seem like it's doing... I know they keep mentioning that it's helping half a million undocumented immigrants. But I think it's... I don't know. I think it's less. I think it's just bullshit. I think he use one's votes, but then at the end of the day I'm like, "Wow. Voting for the other guy is even worse." So I think whatever, the middle has shifted. I think in 2008 there was still a lot of hope that we could shift the immigration conversations towards the left. I think Trump and the Republicans have been very successful at shifting it all the way to the right. So I'm not hopeful. But again, we are choosing between two evils and Biden is the lesser evil of the two regarding immigration.
Freeman: Not a lot has changed in the grand scheme. There's a lot of people in the chat. I'm going to bring Ingrid back and as she comes back in, Myra G. Writes, "I work with unaccompanied minors who find themselves in difficult situations and they're processing their journeys. Just thank you very much for sharing your story." She says, "Minors I work with, love reading your book."
Now, that Ingrid is back, I wonder if the two of you could maybe talk a little bit more writing about something that you shared with a parent. One of the questions, Javier, which has come up is reading your book. You mentioned at some point, I think in the acknowledgements that your father read it and wept or something, and your mother stopped at chapter one. Has she finished it? And Ingrid, I guess the question applies to you too. What does it mean when you write about something that a family has shared and that you are maybe telling them something that they either already know or don't see from your perspective?
Zamora: Ingrid?
Contreras: Yeah. You want me to go first?
Zamora: Yeah.
Contreras: So my dad, I sent him my novel and I didn't hear from him in four days and I got very scared because I didn't know what had happened. My novel was autobiographical and I was fictionalizing the story of how we left Colombia in a very violent time. I finally texted him and I was like, "I haven't heard from you. Did I do something wrong? What's happening?" And he said, "Oh, in this time I've read the book six times."
So he had read the book so many times and what he said, which was so meaningful to me, and Javier, you were talking earlier about your grandfather, and I think that there is a sort of South American male, Latino male who just has a hard time getting in touch with his feelings. And so what my dad said was reading your book, was seeing myself having the feelings that I never thought that I had, had.
So it was almost like my fictionalization of his character going through the hard time and that part thing allowed him to process his own emotions about it, which was so amazing. And it just made me cry. My mother has always just... She just doesn't like readings and she just hates books. So she's never read anything that I've written, and she is just happy to know that she's on the front cover of the memoir and she's like, "This is just... Thank you so much. I deserve this."
Orally, I tell her what's in the book, and she is just a natural storyteller. And I feel that she just gets storytelling and in some way that I am just always learning at her feet about storytelling. My dad hasn't read the memoir because I told him that I mentioned rape that happened. And so I think that he was just like, "It's just too hard for me to read," and I completely understand.
So I think, I don't know, sometimes especially if you're going back to a real thing that happened to you that's hard for your parents to read, that's not always super accessible to them. I totally understand that. It was hard for me to go back and recreate and write through those things. So they're very proud of me. It's like a mixed thing. In some ways, I'm being so personal that I am very happy that they're not reading it. Javier, do you feel this way? It's almost like a relief like, "Oh yeah, good, please don't read that part." And in some ways, yes, you do want your parents to read it, so it's like, yeah, it's this dual thing. I'm curious about how you feel about it.
Zamora: Kind of similar reactions from my parents. My mom likes to read, but hasn't been quite an avid reader as my dad. My dad read it, and I like to say that he read it with his head and his heart. He finished it because I kind of tricked him for the Spanish version. They helped me translate it. Somebody else translated it and then we were revising it. So I was like, "Here, can you guys revise this?" So my dad was like, "Yeah, I can revise it." And my mom's like, "No, I can't."
And the other layer to that is my mom is in therapy. My dad doesn't believe in therapy. And it's also traumatic for them. They didn't know where I was for those 11 weeks and that gave them their own trauma. And so I get it, but I think I do need my mom to eventually read it. And she has promised me that she will, but not yet.
Freeman: Yeah. There's a fair number of questions the audience about if you had the opportunity to speak to, and I'm going to try to fashion this so that both of you could answer because Ingrid's first novel Fruit of the Drunken Tree was based on the kidnapping of her father from which he escaped from because he happened to have known his kidnapper beforehand. Not always the opportunity of everybody. And I guess, Ingrid, I'm sure you've been asked, "What would you say if you could talk to that person now? And Javier, the question is, if you had the opportunity to speak with Border Patrol Agent Gonzalez, what would you want to say to him? So maybe start with that, or start with you, Ingrid.
Contreras: Yeah. I think with writing my first novel, there's the gift of literature where it invites you to inhabit another consciousness that might be the consciousness of someone who's opposite to you or somebody who would be in the role of hurting you. When I was writing the novel, I interviewed former guerilla members who would be in charge of facilitating kidnappings. And this was sort of my way of just trying to understand what is the other consciousness.
I know what we lived as a family and just trying to understand what's on the other side of that. And this might be a different situation than Javier's situation, but I think in the end, when I was interviewing former guerilla members, I think it was just the gift of it was seeing how hierarchical the oppression can be. The reason why you might join a guerilla group is because you are suffering through oppression, which has to do with the government and has to do with the history of oppressing indigenous people.
And really, that's what I would say boils down to. So when you have someone who is in that role, the person who was the leader of the guerilla camp where my father was kidnapped, turned out to be his childhood friend. And it's just the luck of that is just, it's beyond. That doesn't happen. And for that person to be able to have a human response to like, "Oh, I know you and I'm going to let you go, because I know," I think that the literary opportunity is for us to think about why isn't that everyone... Going back to the question about why don't we feel the same kinship to everyone?
If we can feel like we're all connected, then that's what would make it impossible to do that to somebody else. So I don't know. So I think, what would I say to that person? I would say thank you. And I would say, "Why isn't that everybody else as well?" I think that's what I would say.
Zamora: Yeah. I mean for me, just quit your job. Don't be a fucking border patrol agent. The border patrol does not need to exist, just like the police.
Contreras: With some things, part of their job is to do away with the water that other people might leave in the desert. Even that part of the job, where is your humanity? You're going to go into the desert and empty out these gallons of water that other people are leaving in the desert so that people don't die. And that's part of your job.
Zamora: And it's hierarchical too. Most of the border patrol is Latino Americans. It's made up from Latino Americans because a lot of them live along the border because most of the counties along the border are some of the poorest in the United States. And so it's all related. If you're poor, the border patrol offers, I think entry level job is at $85,000. Who would not take that job? But at the same time, you're incarcerating your own, I don't know. But still quit your job. Fuck the border patrol. And free Palestine.
Freeman: The question about the border patrol had come... I just want to highlight it. It came from Hermanas and Comadres Book Club. If you're still listening, Hermanas and Comadres Book Club, I'd love to know what you are, because this listener has asked quite a few questions. Just one or two last comments. Rosa Gur wrote, "Your journey was enormous to undertake as a child." You've answered her question, which is, "Do you plan to write more about your life after you reunited with your parents?" And following that, Cynthia Garcia wrote in Spanish, but I'll translate it. "It's a heavy emotional burden to have to cross, especially at the age you had."
I'm highly conscious that we've had this entire conversation in English, but I don't speak Spanish, so I wonder if either of you wanted to talk to each other in Spanish before we signed off, just to acknowledge that there's this whole other language that the two of you share. Or if that doesn't feel right for this situation, it's totally up to you. Amanda Duran says, "Si," but that's the limit of my Spanish, so my moderation will drop away.
Zamora: Pero la otra cosa también es que tampoco es nuestro idioma y eso estoy tratando de procesar ahorita. Cada año que pasa el diez de junio no lo celebro pero lo reconozco, porque fue cuando entré a este país. Y este año mi esposa me regaló clases para aprender náhuatl, y creo que estamos en una época donde necesitamos entender y comprender nuestras raíces. Lo que he aprendido y la frase más importante es "yo te amo".
Contreras: Y también he visto en la comunidad latina que si tú no hablas español es malo, pero tenemos que entender que a veces no es nuestro idioma sino también es el idioma que nos han impuesto y que hemos tenido que aprender. Entonces hay como todos estos niveles de lenguaje. Y no sé. Yo me fui cuando yo tenía 15 años, y es como si el lenguaje se hubiera quedado a esa edad. Cuando vuelvo a Colombia uso cosas que decíamos pero en los 90s.
Zamora: A mí se me quedan viendo los niños, y me dicen, "vos hablas como mi papá".
Contreras: Exacto.
Zamora: Porque el español que platicaba aquí era de mis padres, y mis padres crecieron en los 70s. Muy complicado, pero aquí estamos.
Freeman: It's been really wonderful sharing an hour with the two of you. Ingrid, it's so nice of you to give up an evening to jump in and be my wing person to talk to Javier.
Contreras: Oh, my absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for asking.
Freeman: It's a joy to see you. Javier, your book has really touched so many people, and it's such an incredible, incredibly intelligent and beautiful memoir, and it's so thrilling to watch someone write at the height of two genres. So we hope that there's more to come for you, but already you've given us so much. And thank you so much for opening yourself up for this hour with the California Book Club.
Zamora: Thank you both. I'm a huge fan of the two of you, and it just felt like a special hour to share together. And thank you for tuning in from... What time is it? It's 2:00 AM for you?
Freeman: Yeah. It's a little late, but I'm always awake when I'm talking to you.
Zamora: Gracias, Ingrid.
Freeman: Here comes Blaise to walk us out here, or Beth, thanks again.
Zerega: Yeah, thank you. Wow. I mean, that was just a wonderful evening. Thank you, Javier. Thank you, Ingrid. Thank you, John. For those who are asking, tonight's program was recorded. It'll be available on altaonline.com late tonight. Give us some time to get it posted or come back first thing in the morning. You also receive a thank you note in tomorrow's email with links to all the things that were discussed, all the links to the book, so on. Some people are asking where to get a copy of Solito, visit your local independent bookstore. Support them please.
And if you want to support Alta in the current issue, I failed to mention that we have an essay by Javier about Why I Write. Each issue of Alta's were quarterly. We devote six pages to that quarter's California Book Club selections, and we usually have the authors write an essay about what inspires them to write, as well as a little review by David Ulin, our book editor about why you should read this book, why it matters.
So please check that out. And be sure to join us next month. On July 25th, we'll host Venita Blackburn and Dead in Long Beach. Terrific book. So get ready for that one. And don't forget, please to support us, visit altaonline.com. Become a member. You'll can get our five years of laughs. You'll start laughing tonight and not stop laughing for those five years. Oh, and if you were wondering about bookstores, we also have this fantastic guide. Check it out. Buy one, put it in your glove box. Check them all off as you visit them.
So again, thank you everyone for joining. It was a really, really full house. Everyone was hanging here on your words, Javier and Ingrid and John. And we'd be so grateful if folks, when the meeting stops to please fill out the survey. There'll be a little one-minute survey asking you about tonight.
Freeman: Please, can I interject here? I just feel really bad because there were two people who mentioned your high school, Javier, and I know how important it's for alma maters to be claimed..
Zamora: Branson?
Freeman: Do you want to say anything about the Branson School?
Zamora: It was difficult for me. It was complicated, but I will eventually write about it. So I don't really claim Branson, but here we are.
Zerega: Yeah. Well, gosh, thank you again. Thank you. Everyone who joined, it's the warmth and the kindness, and the community. We're just... I'm aglow. I think everyone is too.
Contreras: This was a beautiful night. Thank you.
Freeman: Thank you, Javier.
Zamora: Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye.
Zerega: Thanks all. Bye-bye.•
